Jeremy Akers

Hey Hi, this feels super awkward. Here I am, just some relatively random person, about to represent the global grassroots community of Liberating Structures. Maybe that’s a bit presumptive, so let me describe the corner of the community I tend. But first a little context. Back in 2012 these dudes, Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz, published a book “The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures” under the Creative Commons Copyright (with attribution and non-commercial if you’re curious). The contents of that book are 33 tools for Shared Thinking, you can imagine them as facilitation techniques that are simple enough that no background or experience in facilitation is needed to use them. They are so simple in fact that you, yes you, can use them to organize any conversation you are having with any amount of people. What I mean to say is that no external facilitation is needed. Democratizing and distributing the ability to facilitate any conversation anywhere. Think about what that can do. Not only can everyone benefit when any one person in a group can offer ideas on how to enable the conversation, but everyone can also do so, opening up an new meta-conversation we call Process Mindfulness. This Toolkit of Liberating Structures is a Commons and it continues to be developed as an Open Source development project by users all over the planet. Go ahead and google whatever country/city you are in and “Liberating Structures User Group” and you will find folks self-organizing their practice sessions. My name is Jeremy Akers, and I am one of those people. Now this Process Mindfulness thing is pretty much the best platonic sensation I’ve ever experienced. It is extraordinarily generative and, my favorite part, it naturally leads to action: using the product of the meta-conversation on process to have the larger conversation on content. I work as a person who hosts a lot of meetings. I usually spend 3 hours of planning and preparation for every 1 hour of meeting. Unless I am working with another LS User, then we can shrink that planning and prep time down to 30 minutes. Like I said this feels extraordinary, and I want to spend more of my life with more people in this way. So I am hyper-active in the LS scene working towards these ends by<ol><li>Growing the amount of people familiar with LS</li><li>Increasing the fluency of everyone with LS</li></ol> For example, every Monday I host a Wise Crowds LS Design Call where a random group comes together to give and get help planning or designing meetings and workshops. One person takes on the role of client with a Design Brief consisting of:1. Place: context meeting is happening in2. Purpose: intended goal/outcome of the session3. Participants: who will be need in order to be successful4. Process: any ideas they have for how to go about it (or not)<img src="https://giveth.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/QmZx3Rws6vjYbU6LmxtVRRYTFoDvXxC1nepzxbUQHmmfiE"> Tthen use the Liberating Structures Wise Crowds and Design Storyboard to Consult on the Client’s Design Brief. In about 30 minutes we prototype what we call a String of different LS they could use to meet the Design Brief. Oh yeah that’s one of the coolest things about LS, you can String them together like letters, words, sentences, paragraphs etc.<a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/1_IkLF8sgh2UgisDx7efdd0scoxqSbezO/edit?filetype=msword&amp;usp=docslist_api" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://docs.google.com/file/d/1_IkLF8sgh2UgisDx7efdd0scoxqSbezO/edit?usp=docslist_api&amp;filetype=msword</a> The idea is that we’re engineering a win-win-win-win-win<ul><li>Clients win consultation.</li><li>Context of the client wins by the application of all this Shared Thinking</li><li>Consultants win learning from one another and practice designing Strings</li><li>Learners win from practical examples of what specific LS are good for</li><li>I win by getting to spend more time, with more people in this generative and creative way</li></ul> Clients are then more confident to use LS in their context, introducing them to more people. Grow the User base, check. Increase fluency, check. Clients come back and tell us how it went, what they learnt and the Liberating Structures Learning Journey never ends. You should come join us. I’m sure there is at least 1 meeting that could become more life affirming a s a result<a href="https://www.meetup.com/changehackers/events/283176507" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.meetup.com/changehackers/events/283176507/</a> In addition to events like this, their are meetups happening almost every day that are more try-it-out practice sessions. A group of people will set a topic and then lead a group through a string of structures to explore the topic. They get to practice hosting and joiners get to experience how the structures work. I usually host one of these myself per month in one of 4 different groups.<a href="https://www.meetup.com/Liberating-Structures-go-online" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.meetup.com/Liberating-Structures-go-online/</a><a href="https://www.meetup.com/liberatingstructures" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.meetup.com/liberatingstructures/</a><a href="https://www.meetup.com/changehackers" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.meetup.com/changehackers/</a>Whatever client I’m working with at the moment Plus all the action on the LS Learning Journey side there is the continued development in the community. New LS, new tools for using the old ones and guides for applying them to perennial problems. For example there is a Community of Practice around adaptive Strategy Knotworking, where we’re working to refine and explain the myriad of different ways we us LS to explore the unknown in order for us to act in it.<img src="https://giveth.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/Qmehd32rpYhkG9hfDLEVCDvH7spMXUJiMkhrxBipHs5ucK">In the lingo/jargon of the LS scene, I am what you would call a User Group Organizer. What I want to do is to pump as many resources as possible into the pool of User Group Organizers. Not only would I like to go pro in serving the community full-time but I want to enable ever other User Group Organizer to do the same. Grand Hypothesis:I believe that offering resources to those intrinsically motivated towards stewardship will encourage them to do more in the way of events, ambassadorship, and development of the commons.So I will create a DAO in order to bring these contributors together, make our coordination explicit and develop a web3 ledger of participation and proficiencyAnd measure worldwide LS users, level of proficiency on a per structure basis, overall levels of development, distribution of proficiency, duration of development arcI am right if the tooling becomes adopted, participation in the global community goes from 5k to 25k in 12 months, and all existing 5k take a step in their development, between 3 and 81 fulltime stewards<img src="https://giveth.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/Qmb6z43Y9MqCNDGvUAy2H44xPFV2vFdczhMbVDiQPFKNeS">

Wise Crowds Liberating Structures

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